In His Image?

Since we all know "God" is perfect and immortal, and since the Booble tells us we are all created "in His image," one is led to the inescapable conclusion that "God" is a mean old bastard. First, "He" denies us immortality unless we adhere to an arbitrary and capricious desert warlord code, then "He" punishes us by killing us, a penultimate evil. Once "He" shows us how mortal we are, "He" decides how nice we have behaved on earth, which he uses, like a judge at a revocation of probation, to send us to Pearly Gatesville or Chipotle Hell. We cannot possibly be "created" in "His" image, unless of course "His" image is imperfect and mortal.

Hitchens and others have reminded us of this. It would seem to me that dogs would go to heaven for their ability to sniff cancer in the human body, and cats would, too, for their night sight. But, then, "God" takes these animals in 12-15 years, whereas "He" allows us to go on to 70 and older (unless you are born in, say, Haiti -- one might conclude "God" really hates African-Americans, just as the Mormons insist). As the late George Carlin continually complained, "God" is more arbitrary than the national lottery: the illustration Carlin uses is female bare-headedness in synagogues and head covering in cathedrals. Sheesh! What's a poor girl to do?

Nano, you sound not only atheist but surrealist. The ultimate image you employ is like something out of a Buñuel movie, say, The Milky Way, or his unproduced screenplay based on Huysmans' La-Bas. As to your point, of course we have chronic back problems: our ancestors swung in trees and got plenty of exercise, whereas the body of homo sapiens, being an intermediate stage in terms of geological age, is not yet evolved into a superior species. With our sedantary lifestyles, we allow the primate portions of our bodies to atrophy. As the mind becomes more and more evolved and use of the body less and less important, the latter suffers. If we are created in "God's" image, I pity the poor s.o.b. Seriously, if there is a "god," it's DNA.

Theists have told me that no one did: god has always existed. And yet, a material universe 'had' to have been created, they also say! It's nonsensical -- or so they've told me -- to think that the material universe, in some form or other, could have this same quality, could have always existed. They've told me that it had to have had a creator: that this is just 'common sense!' They see no problem with this logic. One theist even told me that if the universe had always existed, then we would have to worship it as god. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

It's the other way around. The God of the Buy bull was created in the image of vicious and bloodthirsty Bronze Age goat herders. But this God is also in our image today. The Buy bull takes all of the worst, most despicable, qualities that we human beings display, and make those the highlights of the Hebrew god's personality. He is jealous, bloodthirsty, vengeful, petulant, overbearing, oppressive, controlling, and any other evil aspect of humanity one can come up with.

Thomas Paine said, "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man". I think it justifiable to take that truth uttered by Thomas Paine and reverse it with as much justification..."A cruel man believes in a cruel God". All gods ever believed in by men have been known by their followers to have been cruel at times, but the God of the Buy bull takes the prize for cruelty and viciousness. What say you ?

I say that it is only logical that the god of the believers is cruel, since a good number of believers are cruel, sometimes without realizing it. The bible was used by slave owners prior to the Civil War to justify enslavement of Africans, and although most don't own slaves, the Mormons until only recently regarded blacks as inferior. I think the argument from evil is consistent with your conclusion. He is either good and impotent or he's powerful but evil. Why believe in such a deity? And since all Christians believe God is good, the only conclusion one can reach is that the evil god does, or allows as the case may be, is regarded as "good." You know the old saying that the Greeks did not love their Gods but feared them. Believers in our time claim to love their gods (Jehovah-Jesus, Yahweh, and Allah) so they must love the evil that is perhaps the most characteristic trait of the gods of the O.T., the Torah, and the Koran. (It is inconceivable to me that although the O.T. was written three or four centuries B.C.E., Christians claim that Jesus honored its pronouncements -- "came to fulfill the law of the prophets -- but his "turn the other cheek" philosophy is at odds with the O.T.'s "eye for an eye" way of looking at things, but I digress.) To me it is an either/or proposition. Either God does not exist, or he exists but he's a mean old shit. Paine was right on. Wasn't it John Adams who referred to him as "that damned atheist"?